On libraries, services and networks.

The Economist has a brief article about blogging and how corporations are taking notice.

Steve Rubel, of CooperKatz, a public-relations firm, reckons that companies should also have a ready-made plan for influencing bloggers if a crisis does occur. Mr Rubel runs the firm's Micro Persuasion practice, which helps companies improve their marketing by using blogs and other conversational media. He recommends setting up a "lockbox blog" that is hidden behind an internet firewall, but can be made visible to the public at short notice. Any websites or video clips that companies might want to direct the public to in an emergency, for example, could be prepared in advance. Then, he likes to tell clients: "in case of emergency, break glass and blog." [Corporate reputations | The blog in the corporate machine | Economist.com]

I have no real sense of the impact of blogs in the library world, of who reads what, of what their influence is relative to the legacy library magazine literature, of what their overall levels of traffic are. Internal metrics - 'citation counts' for example - are not really very revealing about broader interests or impacts.

Comments: 1

Posted:Feb 15, 2006

by:walt

"I have no real sense of the impact of blogs in the library world..."

I wonder how one could gain such a sense (I certainly don't claim to have it). I'd guess that a few library blogs have influence roughly comparable to the legacy literature, partly because (much as I hate to say it) I'm not sure the legacy literature has all that much influence... Except, of course, that blogs only influence those who read blogs, and I'd guess that's less than 10% of the profession.

It might make an interesting research project (and the project should also include both the gray e-literature such as Cites & Insights and Marylaine Block's Ex Libris and the "proper" e-literature such as D-Lib and Ariadne). Not an easy research project, I think.